19 Crows

19 Crows – The official plague wine of TGU

Here’s a new mead. It’s called 19 crows. It’s productive, I think, to make wine about stuff. Lately, I’ve had a lot of free time for working on wine, and there’s been this big ol’ thing to make wine about, so I did. The week this all started escalating, I dug through my box of herbs and grabbed a bunch of stuff that pops up in folk medicine and a couple other things for balance. You can see on the label (maybe, my drawings aren’t so great) that there’s habanero, rose hip, ginger, horehound, and elderberry, and there are a few others, ten altogether. I’m kind of shocked how well it’s turned out. There are what should be too many flavors in there for any of them to express themselves, but I think everything works very well together. I’m also very pleased with the sweetness – normally this would be too much sugar for me to enjoy, but the herbs cut it very well and man, it’s just a really tasty, exciting, balanced mead!

More Music, More Wine

So we’ve got more Quarantunes music; our second installment is Laramie’s own Ryan Archibald! I really like Ryan’s music, and this recording sounds great.
It’s also bottling day, because any day can be bottling day now! I’m getting the latest Bochet in bottles so it’ll be available tomorrow. This is batch 2020-0007, for those of you keeping track. All bochets are different from one another. This is a good one, it’s a little sweeter than some previous bochets and the caramel profile is entirely caramel with no hint of those darker toastier burnt sort of flavors. It’s fairly fruity, I’d say less so than some previous batches, and still has quite a bit of the avocado honey character left, which is a new thing to me. Anyway, if you wanna try it out, you know what to do! (Pop over to the online store and order some!)

Now we’ve got music

As you may already know, we host a lot of live music in normal times. We can’t do that right now, so instead, we’re hosting recorded music. It’s kinda like the livestreams a lot of musicians have been doing lately, but you can check it out whenever you want. Our first guy is our pal Micah Wyatt, check him out!
We’ll be posting a new set every Sunday. You can find all the sets in the ‘quarantunes’ menu. Cheers!

Welp.

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted any updates on here. As you all know, the bars in Laramie are closed right now. We’re selling bottles for pickup and delivery – check out the ‘Online Store’ link at the top of the page for ordering and details.
The good news is the site has a cool new look. How do you like it? I think it’s alright.
We’re also working on some music stuff since we’ve had to cancel all our live shows, so stay tuned for that.
I’ll be posting updates here and on our facebook page. Meanwhile, stay healthy!

Ginger Mead – The Triumphant Return

Hey everybody!  Ginger mead is back today.  I know it’s not Friday, but I’m leaving town tomorrow, which is Friday, to go to the Mazer Cup.  Anyway,  the new ginger mead is pretty awesome.  It’s a little on the sweet side, but the ginger balances that out well, and the yeast I used threw in a lot of acid for balance too.  It’s nice, the ginger aroma is pretty strong, and the bite is just right – I think it’s pretty comparable to those fancy ginger beers you get, the ones that are real spicy and really kind of wake you up when you take a sip.  Just this is mead instead of soda.

Basswood Show Mead

Hey everybody!  There’s more basswood show mead!  It hasn’t been gone for very long, I suppose, but it’s one of my favorites so I’m glad it’s back.  This new batch is pretty close to the old batch, but it always blows my mind how much difference a few months of age makes.  The flavors are all there, but it’s going to take a while for them to blend together and get to the point where the last batch was.  Anyway, it’s still awesome, even as young as it is.  This stuff is so good that I’m entering it in the Mazer Cup in a few weeks.  The first batch, that is.  This batch isn’t ready for that yet,  but it is ready to drink and enjoy so check it out!!!

Bochet

Bochet!  It is mead, but it’s made with caramelized honey.  It’s super good, but it’s a lot of work.  I did a batch last summer that was pretty stellar and it was gone in about a month.  The current batch is almost as good.  The stuff is hard to make.  To caramelize the honey, I have to dump it in my boiler and let it go for about three hours.  That causes it to boil up to about four times the original volume at about 250 degrees.  Meanwhile, the wine room is running about 95 degrees and completely full of steam, so I’m just pounding water and pouring sweat for three hours.  These are the lengths I go to for the wine.  It’s fun.

Carrot Wine

Hello everybody.  It’s not bottling day today, but it was last Friday.  I bottled an oaked carrot wine.  If I’m totally honest, it was pretty rough.  The good news, though, is that it’s settled down a lot and it’s actually pretty good now.  It still needs a few more weeks before it’s totally settled down, but I have faith that it will be excellent.

Oh, there’s another cool thing too.  I got these new corks and this is the first batch I’ve gotten to use them on (that’s not strictly true, I did use them on a few cases of Orpheus, but whatever).  They have my logo printed on them and it looks pretty rad.

Anyway, I got enough of those to keep in corks for the rest of the year, so look forward to some rad corks.

Orpheus

New wine today – this one is called Orpheus.  It’s the last strong mead for a while, until I come up with something else.  It’s a chili mead with rose hips, ginger, black tea, orange peel, and heather.  It’s real nice – the chilis (I used poblanos for this batch) are pretty mild but have a lot of that real nice peppery flavor.  The ginger goes in there very well too to give you a little warm tingle in the back of your throat, and the rose hips come out almost apple flavored.

Being the last big crazy mead for a while, this is also the last one with a commissioned label for a while.  The art for this one was done by Kath Yarkosky.  The labels aren’t quite ready yet, but I’m really looking forward to seeing this on a bottle, I think it’s going to look awesome.

So most of my big strong wines have a story, this one does too.  Sometimes I can’t sleep, and when that happens I make wine.  A year ago, Bowie died and I couldn’t sleep.  That was kind of weird, because a celebrity dying doesn’t affect my life in really any way, but whatever, I couldn’t sleep.  This is the recipe I came up with when I came down to make wine that night.  I assume you see the reference in the label and can draw the lines to the name.

Aeneas

Today I bottled Aeneas.  It’s a strong beet mead with some spices.  What do you call a beet mead, I wonder?  Anyway, it’s got cinnamon, cardamom, vanilla, marsh rosemary, heather, and white pepper.  It’s really nice and spicy.  The label art is by Zach Bath.  It’s not totally finished yet, but it will be soon! Continue reading “Aeneas”